The Effect of Ram Pressure on the Molecular
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The effect of ram pressure on the molecular gasof galaxies: three case studies in the Virgo cluster: three case studies in the Virgo cluster Bumhyun Lee, Aeree Chung, Stephanie Tonnesen, Jeffrey Kenney, O. Ivy Wong, B. Vollmer, Glen Petitpas, Hugh Crowl, Jacqueline van Gorkom To cite this version: Bumhyun Lee, Aeree Chung, Stephanie Tonnesen, Jeffrey Kenney, O. Ivy Wong, et al.. The effectof ram pressure on the molecular gas of galaxies: three case studies in the Virgo cluster: three case studies in the Virgo cluster. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Oxford University Press (OUP): Policy P - Oxford Open Option A, 2017, 466 (2), pp.1382-1398. 10.1093/mnras/stw3162. hal-03161862 HAL Id: hal-03161862 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03161862 Submitted on 17 Mar 2021 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. MNRAS 466, 1382–1398 (2017) doi:10.1093/mnras/stw3162 Advance Access publication 2016 December 7 The effect of ram pressure on the molecular gas of galaxies: three case studies in the Virgo cluster Bumhyun Lee,1‹ Aeree Chung,1,2,3‹ Stephanie Tonnesen,4 Jeffrey D. P. Kenney,5 O. Ivy Wong,6 B. Vollmer,7 Glen R. Petitpas,8 Hugh H. Crowl9 and Jacqueline van Gorkom10 1Department of Astronomy, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea 2Yonsei University Observatory, Yonsei University, 50 Yonsei-ro, Seodaemun-gu, Seoul 03722, Korea 3 Joint ALMA Observatory, Alonso de Cordova´ 3107 Vitacura, Santiago, Chile Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/466/2/1382/2646788 by guest on 17 March 2021 4Carnegie Observatories, 813 Santa Barbara St, Pasadena, CA 91101, USA 5Yale University Astronomy Department, PO Box 208101, New Haven, CT 06520-8101, USA 6International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research, The University of Western Australia M468, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia 7CDS, Observatoire astronomique de Strasbourg, Universite´ de Strasbourg, CNRS, UMR 7550, 11 rue de l’Universite,´ F-67000 Strasbourg, France 8Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, 60 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA 9Division of Science and Mathematics, Bennington College, 1 College Drive, Bennington, VT 05201, USA 10Department of Astronomy, Columbia University, Mail Code 5246, 550 W 120th St, New York, NY 10027, USA Accepted 2016 December 2. Received 2016 December 2; in original form 2016 July 16 ABSTRACT We present 12CO (2–1) data of three Virgo spirals – NGC 4330, NGC 4402 and NGC 4522 obtained using the Submillimeter Array. These three galaxies show clear evidence of ram pressure stripping due to the cluster medium as found in previous H I imaging studies. Using the high-resolution CO data, we investigate how the properties of the inner molecular gas disc change while a galaxy is undergoing H I stripping in the cluster. At given sensitivity limits, we do not find any clear signs of molecular gas stripping. However, both its morphology and kinematics appear to be quite disturbed as those of H I. Morphological peculiarities present in the molecular and atomic gas are closely related with each other, suggesting that the molecular gas can be also affected by strong intracluster medium (ICM) pressure even if it is not stripped. CO is found to be modestly enhanced along the upstream sides in these galaxies, which may change the local star formation activity in the disc. Indeed, the distribution of Hα emission, a tracer of recent star formation, well coincides with that of the molecular gas, revealing enhancements near the local CO peak or along the CO compression. FUV and Hα share some properties in common, but FUV is always more extended than CO/Hα in the three galaxies, implying that the star-forming disc is rapidly shrinking as the molecular gas properties have changed. We discuss how ICM pressure affects dense molecular gas and hence star formation properties while diffuse atomic gas is being removed from a galaxy. Key words: ISM: molecules – galaxies: clusters: intracluster medium – galaxies: evolution – galaxies: ISM – galaxies: spiral. deficient in H I compared to field galaxies based on their single- 1 INTRODUCTION dish observations. In addition, Giovanelli & Haynes (1985)have Since Gunn & Gott (1972) suggested that a galaxy might lose found that the H I content is well correlated with the location of its interstellar medium (ISM) by interacting with the intracluster galaxies in a sense that H I is more deficient at smaller distances medium (ICM) in the cluster environment, much evidence for ram from the cluster centre. Then the H I synthesis imaging studies such pressure stripping has been found to date. In early days, Davies & as Warmels (1988a,b) and Cayatte et al. (1990) have shown that H I- Lewis (1973) have shown that Virgo galaxies are generally more deficient galaxies near the cluster centre have small H I-to-optical extents, truncated within the stellar disc in many cases. In a more recent high-resolution H I imaging study of ∼50 selected Virgo E-mail: [email protected] (BL); [email protected] (AC) galaxies by Chung et al. (2009), a number of galaxies have been C 2016 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society Molecular gas properties of Virgo spirals 1383 found with various scales of extraplanar H I gas or long H I tails, Therefore, in order to get a deeper understanding on how galax- indicating that ram pressure stripping is indeed acting in the cluster ies become passive after H I stripping, not only the possibility of environment. stripping but also the detailed properties of molecular gas inside a As a galaxy loses its ISM, the star formation rate is expected to galaxy under strong ICM pressure need to be probed. Hence, using be suppressed, which agrees well with the observations. As a good the Submillimeter Array (SMA),1 we have taken high-resolution example, Koopmann & Kenney (2004a) find that the massive star 12CO (2–1) imaging data of a subsample of Virgo galaxies that formation rate of Virgo spirals is lower than their field counterpart have lost atomic gas significantly by ICM pressure. Some prelim- by a factor of 2.5 on average. Koopmann & Kenney (2004b) also inary results are published in Lee & Chung (2015),andinthis show that many Virgo spirals have a smaller Hα extent compared work, we present more complete analysis on both morphology and to their stellar disc, reflecting that the process truncating H I discs kinematics of three Virgo galaxies based on the SMA data. may also be acting on the star-forming disc and Hα emission. This paper is organized as follows. We introduce the sample in On the other hand, molecular gas is unlikely to be as easily Section 2. Details of observations and data reduction procedure stripped as atomic hydrogen, since it is more tightly bound to the are provided in Section 3. In Section 4, we present the SMA data, galactic centre and the density is higher. In fact, most previous stud- describing the CO morphology and kinematics. In Section 5, we Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/466/2/1382/2646788 by guest on 17 March 2021 ies find that the molecular gas mass of the cluster population is not compare the CO and other wavelength data to discuss how the significantly different from that of field galaxies (Stark et al. 1986; molecular gas in these galaxies has been affected by the ICM pres- Kenney & Young 1989). In addition, more recent studies are finding sure. In Section 6, we summarize the results and conclude. clumpy dust features in the upstream side of H I gas stripped galax- A distance of 16 Mpc (1 arcsec ∼78 pc) to Virgo cluster is adopted ies, which are likely to be surviving dense clouds that are unveiled in this work (Yasuda, Fukugita & Okamura 1997). after diffuse atomic gas is removed (Crowl et al. 2005;Abramson & Kenney 2014; Kenney, Abramson & Bravo-Alfaro 2015). On the other hand, however, the opposite results have also been 2 SAMPLE GALAXIES reported. Rengarajan & Iyengar (1992) find that H2 mass normalized The sample for the SMA observations has been selected from by the dynamical mass of galaxies tends to get larger with increasing the VLA (Very Large Array)2 Imaging study of Virgo galaxies clustercentric distance, which supports that the molecular gas can be in Atomic gas (VIVA) by Chung et al. (2009). The VIVA is a high- also deficient in the cluster environment. More recently, Boselli et al. resolution H I imaging study of 53 late-type galaxies that are located (2014) show that H I-deficient galaxies in the cluster environment throughout the Virgo cluster from a high-density core region to low- tend to be also modestly deficient in molecular gas. density outskirts. Among the VIVA sample, we have selected three However, the molecular gas fraction to the optical luminosity of galaxies with clear evidence for active H I stripping, NGC 4330, spiral galaxies measured using 12CO (1–0) ranges quite widely for NGC 4402 and NGC 4522 (Fig. 1). Although these galaxies are all environments (Chung 2012). This implies that the molecular gas thought to have lost a similar fraction of H I gas, being deficient by fraction alone may not be a good tracer of molecular gas deficiency.